


Eat Me

by naaz



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Obsessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, artistic stalking, no one likes suigetsu, sorry suigetsu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:56:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naaz/pseuds/naaz
Summary: In which Itachi is a little creepy, and Karin likes creepy boys.





	Eat Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kanzonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanzonia/gifts).



Sasuke doesn’t deserve her.

Those are the benign intrusive thoughts that creep in as he leans on the far side of the small family room with his sketch book in hand. Sasuke’s a first year in university, hardly his baby brother any more but it still means Itachi shouldn’t be creeping on his friend.

His friends, plural, even though he can dismiss most of them in a single breath.

Suigetsu isn’t his type. Most of it he admits has to do with the fact the younger man has a mannerism that reminds him too much of an ex who’d joined the military for Itachi to spare him a passing glance. Or a kind word or any thought at all. Juugo would be his “pick one” of his brother’s male friends. Soft and sensitive is kind of a thing for Itachi but he’s fairly certain he’d eat the boy alive.

No, it’s a girl. _The_ girl. Itachi’s arm moves carefully as he shades then blends out the panel of her cheek, then the soft dip in of the hollow. She’d look good in water color, he muses, as he writes “Karin” in chicken scratch at the bottom of the page, black eyes flicking away as she looks up at him with something akin to curiousity.

Itachi has a problem. He’d been almost sure the low level attraction would fade. His brother’s friends have never been _old enough_ for him before and this is new, and irritating, and he’d been certain he’d find flaws enough to dismiss her. But her demeanor appeals him. The way she treats others, appeals to him, all of what he’s been able to her appeals to his own quiet stoicism and the bleeding heart that rests beside it.

At first she’d just seemed like a progression from the quiet girl with off pink hair that Sasuke’d had hanging on his every move before their family, Mum and Itachi and Sasuke in tow, had moved.

Sasuke took his fan club in more grace than Itachi ever had. Where Itachi’s philosophy was always to let his social inability drive people off Sasuke is warmer, was warmer, before their parent’s divorce. He’d humored Sakura and Ino and all the others until the rift in their family had started, and then gotten cold on them. Itachi was surprised those girls hadn’t gotten whiplash.

But this one stands up for herself at least, if Sasuke is too much of a brat she doesn’t seem afraid to knock him down a peg or two while she picks herself back up. She doesn’t get along with Suigetsu either, which earns her bonus points in Itachi’s still-mending heart. ( His own coldness towards the boy definitely been noted and explained away by Sasuke at this point. )

She’s more than that though, a replacement for an old friend, and it makes Itachi’s stomach twist that he’s noticed at all.

Today, she’s getting on Itachi’s nerves through no fault of her own. Even with the patience of a saint and the resolve of one as well it’s starting to turn his stomach; the careful looks she throws Sasuke when she knows he isn’t watching.

  
Sasuke doesn’t deserve them, he wants to say. His fingers smear one messy shade of graphite into another and he’s debating if he needs to scribble his brother’s other friends in the margin or if Sasuke’s shaken the old habit of rummaging through his sketch books since Itachi had gotten old enough to do nude studies in class, and in life, of friends and lovers alike.

( He’d do a study of her; with hands and lips and charcoal all alike. He’d paint helixes down her arms and trace the curvature of her body in pastels that would clash against the bright colors of her body, hair and eyes, while they compliment them as well. )

If it’s wrong to think about his brother’s friend, it’s decidedly worse to fantasize about her.

“I’m getting a drink,” he says. It’s half out of nowhere. Juugo jumps and Sasuke just makes a noise of ascent. He doesn’t really need his brother to watch over his study groups now that they’re both old enough they’d have moved out of the house if their mother didn’t seem depressed when they mentioned growing up.

“Anyone need anything?” Itachi asks as an attempt at politeness.

“I’ll come with!” Karin says. She shifts out of her kneel with a measure of grace, bracing a hand on the wall as she work out a kink in her back and her stomach peaks from beneath a too-short shirt as she stretches backwards. Itachi averts his eyes too late. It’s mostly because he wants to see, even if it’s proper to play at embarrassed.

And then she’s tossing a glance at the top of Sasuke’s head and irritation wells up at the pit of his stomach.

“Karin,” Itachi acknowledges. He smiles, pitching his head towards the kitchen. His sketchbook is tucked under his arm. Drink or not, he doesn’t think he’s actually going back to the family room. No one will question his semi-sudden retreat to his own room or his studio.

The kitchen is simple compared to the one they’d grown up in. The _house_ is simple compared to that, the sprawling home that’d once housed ancestors who’d ended up with their names in history books. But the modesty suits their small family and more importantly it’s upkeep is easy to afford under his mother’s allowance from her ex-husband.

Karin moves to the fridge and makes a show of looking in. They’re not a take-out family but half the available space _is_ dedicated to drinks. Even he’s willing to admit it’s a bit much as he moves further into the kitchen.

The liquor is still kept in the cabinet that Sasuke couldn’t reach until last year. He’d meant it. Itachi needed a _drink_ , and his own high functioning alcoholism is the only thing he ever wants to have in common with his father.

He sets his sketchbook aside on the counter as he reaches for his bottle of whiskey that sits next his mother’s sherry and Sasuke’s rum that they both pretend not to notice. Itachi pretends because he’s a bad example, their mother with a sigh every time.

Karin grabs the sketchbook with reflexes he’d not have expected from her.

In his surprise he nearly drops the bottle he’s holding.

“Christ ––– Karin, give that to me.”

But she’s grinning at him, a grin that’s been reserved for one upping Suigetsu and proving the boys wrong all in one. She’s not giving him it back and he can tell that even before the “nu uh” is off her lips.

She glances towards the family room before poking in Itachi in the chest.

“I _finally_ figured it out,” she tells him.

“Figured out what?”

Stupidest question he’s asked in a long time. His tone measured against assumptions that he’s right to ASSUME she’s made. Her expression shifts to bored and even behind her glasses red eyes lose some of their vibrancy.

“Right,” he mutters a beat later.

“You’re _so_ unsubtle and you don’t even realize it. Sasuke warned us you were bad at the social stuff ––” he tries not to bristle at that because she’s right, Sasuke’s right, he is awful at interaction that doesn’t require a three piece suit. “But you’ve been looking at me like you’re going to eat me.”

There’s a smug note there and the moment that Itachi opens his mouth to defend himself she’s flipping through his sketch book, paging to the back and right to what he’d been working on today.

It’s a good piece. If it wasn’t for the subject matter he’d not be shy about showing it but it’s a careful rendition of the girl before him. Her eyes turned towards Sasuke, lips parted with the beginning of teeth behind a full lip. There’s too much attention to detail. It reads clearly that he’d watched her lips too long. He’s caught red handed and how _pleased_ she looks by that is the only real surprise.

Oh. _Oh_.

“You’re not mad?” he hedges.

Her head shakes, her lips pulling up. She seems satisfied by what can only be taken as an admission of his guilt. _I’ve been watching you_ , her image on the page confesses. Karin’s fingers reach out and traces around her image on the page, careful not to touch graphite and skating in the white spaces. Itachi’s been told before that it’s _odd_ to see how another person views you, is that what that is?

“How many more of these are there?” she asks instead. When she glances up towards him his gaze is firmly on the counter and she hums. It’s answer enough.

“How many have you drawn when I wasn’t there?”

Again, silence, though Itachi can feel the heat creep in from his his neck and towards his cheeks. He lets out a long breath and is right about to say he’ll stop when she raises a finger.

“You have a photographic memory right?” The pitch of his eyebrows asks how she knows and she motions towards the family room. “But live models are better. _I draw_ , so don’t say they aren’t. Shapes, flow, you’re fantastic and all but nothing is better than drawing from life.”

She shifts, walking forwards until she’s in his space.

“You _want_ me,” she says. “I’ve been watching you, watching me all day.”

Itachi pauses, tilting his head towards her as his brows pick back up. She still has the victorious little smile that he’s coming to like more than any of the expressions he’d ever seen play across her pretty face. This one brings a light to her eyes that makes him want to reach out and touch. Now, he doesn’t think she’d mind.

“Are you offering to model for me?”

“You’ll just watch me if I don’t,” she says and her casual tone at odds with the accusation.

“I could stop,” he offers. It comes with him taking a step into her personal space but she doesn’t balk.

That expression only sets more firmly in her eyes and her fingers reach to play against scars at her neck. It’s her turn to sigh, her eyes closing for a moment and he sees her only between the flutter of her lashes. Where he’d tempered his fantasies in the past he allows himself to actively indulge, hoping for a moment to see her look up at him with that honeysuckle light in her eyes. He could help, if she wanted it.

“If it’s for _art_ though,” she says.

Mischief dances in the air that lingers and _fortune favors the bold_ so his fingers do reach for the curve of her jaw and he scrapes purple nails against her cheek. Her smirk flickers out and there’s a moment of apprehension. How much of that offer was cloaked in bravado, he wonders, as he leans to brush their lips together.

Karin doesn’t pull away, breathing out against his lips and surging back towards him, catching his lips in her own as her hands come to rest at the sides of his neck. His sketchbook drops, he doesn’t mind.

There’s something affection starved in the way she touches him. Too light, like she thinks he’ll break between her finger tips though her lips haven’t caught the same memo. He pushes back into her, hands moving from her face to her sides, down to the curve of her hips.

His body presses into hers and with the height difference between them he can almost envelop her in his arms. His lips part hers and she’s compliant, soft in the way she gives in but the dominance is never assumed. She gives a good fight.

Her fingers move from his neck to his hair and she tugs. _What_ are they doing? But that only hits when his hands have moved behind her thighs and he’s lifting her –– it says a lot about her trust that she doesn’t balk at that either –– onto the cabinet.

There’s a stutter in her breath and Itachi is leaning into her more fully and –––

“What the _fuck_?”

They break apart. Itachi doesn’t bother to look sheepish. He’s just glad it wasn’t Sasuke, Suigetsu in the doorway, expression twisting before it finally breaks into a grin.

Karin’s from irritated to apprehensive and she’s off the cabinet with a little hop and little “Suigetsu…” at just the same moment he _bolts_ back towards the living room.

“Sasuke!”

Karin tosses Itachi a look before running right after Suigetsu.

“I’ll _murder_ you!”

Itachi cracks a smile as she leaves, resolving to make it a double shot.

He doesn’t deserve her either.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted [here](http://simpletool.tumblr.com/post/160473555983/slides-in-with-the-i-want-the-k-meme-and-w-i-n-ks).


End file.
